As usual Liz and I have left behind cold and unpleasant England for the much warmer climes of Lanzarote. We’re renting a place that we first found two years ago but were unable to rent last year as it was fully booked. This time Liz got in early and so here we are for four weeks. The villa is very comfortable with a great outlook, sunny on the patio all day and it has a great pool and comfy outdoor couches.
For our first night out we went along to the Gourmet Indian Restaurant where we had so much fun last year with the staff. We were rather surprised to find that this year, all the staff that had made us so welcome had now left. That is probably the same in restaurants the whole world over. Staff come and go but happily, the new staff, especially our waitress were fun and friendly and the food was just as superb as it was previously.
Last year’s Indian restaurant staff, sadly missed
Another favourite of ours is the Café Berrugo down in the Marina Rubicon. The manager Juan greeted us as warmly as usual. Last year the food wasn’t quite as good as it normally is so I wasn’t sure what to order but anyway, we went for five tapas dishes and they were all excellent, so much better than our last visit. Perhaps the café has gained a new chef during our absence, anyway, we were really impressed and happy and Juan gave us an extra shot of vodka caramel, a drink I don’t think I’ve had anywhere else except Lanzarote.
The interesting thing is that a few months back I was writing about a run of bad meals and I have to say, I much prefer this, a run of lovely meals.
Before we left the UK we switched on our Sky box and I was pleasantly surprised to see the film Nuremburg available to watch. I was surprised because it was only on at our local cinema a few weeks previously and it was something I wanted to watch. So, we poured ourselves a glass of wine and settled down to watch. The film is the story of the Nuremburg trials held in Germany after the Second World War. Hermann Göring, played in the film by Russell Crowe, is the most prestigious prisoner in the dock. He was the number 2 in the Nazi government until the last few days of the war when Hitler, incensed by a telegram from Göring in which he asked permission to take over the Reich, ordered his arrest.
By Charles Alexander, Office of the United States Chief of Counsel – Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, accession no. 72-911 (Retrieved 2017-04-26), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=161339177
Even so, when Göring handed himself over to the Americans, he was perhaps thinking of the events of the First World War when the Kaiser abdicated and fled Germany and left others to run the country in defeat. Göring, perhaps thought that he was the man to take over Germany in this new defeat. Things would not turn out that way however and Göring, amongst many others, was to be put on trial for crimes against humanity.
The film is based on the story of Douglas Kelley, a psychiatrist who was tasked with examining the nazi prisoners with a view to determining whether they were competent to stand trial. Kelley also tried to get to the bottom of the nature of the evil they had practised. His theory was that they were just ordinary men rather than particularly evil men.
Kelley is played in the film by Rami Malek and the film focusses on his relationship with Göring. It was a good film though for me not in any way outstanding although Russell Crowe’s performance was excellent, I don’t think Malek’s portrayal was in the same class.
To be honest I remember a similar film, perhaps a made for TV film from some years ago which was much superior. I think it was a two part mini series also titled Nuremburg starring Alec Baldwin as supreme court justice Robert Jackson and Brian Cox as Göring.
Göring of course commits suicide rather than be hanged and in the mini series, they made much of the relationship between Göring and his American guard. Did the guard slip Göring a cyanide capsule with which to evade the hangman’s noose? It was probably more likely that Göring had it concealed all along. He was a charismatic character but at the end of the day, he went along with Hitler like many others.
Before leaving for Lanzarote, one of my friends asked me how many books I would be taking along to read. I wasn’t sure at the time but at least four I thought. So, she answered, we can expect another Book Bag post then! There will be a Book Bag post but to carry on from Nuremburg, I was surprised to see it on Sky cinema so soon after its theatrical release. I thought it might have been a Sky original production but it wasn’t so I was even more surprised to see it on Sky so soon.
Another film I watched recently on Netflix was the Thursday Murder Club. Again, it was on TV very soon after its cinema release, in fact I think it was actually a Netflix production. I enjoyed the opening part of the film but then lost interest somewhere around the middle. I might have picked up my iPad and started surfing and then got interested again towards the end. It was a good film with an impressive cast and its one that I should watch again and perhaps pay more attention to the next time.
It just so happens that I picked up the book to read here in Lanzarote. It’s written by Richard Osman who is more famous as the frontman on the BBC’s Pointless quiz show as well as various other TV shows. The book and film are about a group of people in a retirement village who meet to discuss cold case crimes but then find a murder committed on their very doorstop. The group of mostly eighty year olds then get on with the task of solving the murder. There seem to be a lot of things going on and a great deal of characters to remember which put me off a little at first but a great device used by the writer is having alternate chapters written as diary entries by Joyce, one of the club members. She goes over the past events, adding in details of her own life along the way, talking about her neighbours and daughter amongst other things and sometimes previewing the next chapter for us.
It’s a very original and witty book and even though I’m only half way through I’m already thinking about getting the follow up book. One minor complaint though, there is a large cast of characters and things do get complicated making it not always easy to follow.
You might have seen some horror stories on the internet and social media about Lanzarote lately. I’ve seen so many posts about the dreadful weather and the rain. OK, there has been rain, quite a lot of it which is pretty unusual for Lanzarote. The thing is, when it rains back home in Manchester, it tends to rain and rain and get pretty cold at the same miserable time. Here in Lanzarote, it rains for about five minutes and then the sun comes out and dries everything. It might get cloudy again and we might have another five minute shower but it soon slips away and despite what you may have heard, Liz and I have spent each day out on the patio swimming and sunbathing and occasionally moving our towels away from the edge of the patio canopy when the rain showers have encroached a little too close.
Now, time for another read or should I do a few more laps in the pool? Decisions, decisions . . .
In March I was getting a little stuck for ideas and I had to recycle an old post, 
I’ve written many posts about books and a regular series is one in which I compare books to their filmed counterparts. In August I added a post about one of my favourite book/film series, 
It’s cold, in fact it’s bloody cold and it’s no secret that I hate the cold. I could write about the cold I suppose but then 
In the latter part of the book Mia talks mostly about Woody Allen with whom she started a relationship with in 1980. I’m a huge fan of Woody and his films. The two met in 1979 and were introduced to each other by Michael Caine. Woody invited her to his New Year’s Eve Party and later, in April of 1980, Mia received a call from his secretary asking if Mia would like to meet Woody for lunch.
Just now we have finished our touring part of the holiday and we have come to our rented gîte where we have parked the van and are spending time in this wonderful house that we regularly rent just outside the small village of Parçay-les-Pins.
I saw the film version of this a few years ago which was pretty good, if a little odd. It was presented in a very peculiar way in that the author, Alan Bennett, is portrayed as two people, one as himself as he appears in the story and two, as himself as he writes the story. That oddity aside it was really a rather good and original film. When I heard there was a book version I quickly went to one my usual internet book stores and promptly bought it.
Liz and I always visit a village fête at the weekend, usually those with a vide grenier or brocante attached. A vide grenier is just a car boot sale which we both love. I usually pick up connecting leads for my laptop or iPad, after all, you can never have enough electrical leads. Brocantes are more like flea markets or antique fairs. Just the kind of place to pick up those old telephones that I still love, especially those Bakelite ones.
I picked this book up ages ago and thought it would be a good holiday read. I’ve always liked Roger Moore even though I absolutely hate his James Bond films. I love Moore’s self-deprecating humour, plenty of which is evident in this book. The first part of the book was really interesting and entertaining but like a lot of celebrity autobiographies, this one just gets a little tedious when Roger just seems to list the films and locations and other celebrities he seems to know. On the back of the book was a review claiming this to be the best film autobiography since David Niven’s 
Rooting around in a secondhand shop in St Annes recently I picked up a hardback copy of Winston Churchill’s book My Early Life. It’s a thoroughly wonderful book written in Churchill’s inimitable style. He says in the introduction he has written a book about a vanished age and indeed he has. Churchill was born in 1974 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill who was in turn the son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. His mother was an American, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of an American businessman. She married Lord Randolph and became Lady Churchill.
Looking back, I must have seen the film version before I read the book. Young Winston was directed by Richard Attenborough and is a wonderful adaptation of the book. When Winston first attends school, which of course was boarding school, his headmaster was played by Robert Hardy and he directs Winston to learn some Latin. Winston doesn’t do very well and the headmaster glares down at him and informs him that if he misbehaves, he will be punished, which to a great extent was Churchill’s overall view of school. Later he comments about exams ‘they always contrived to question me about things I didn’t know. I would much rather they asked me about things I did know.
The charge was depicted in the film Young Winston and in his book Churchill ponders about fate and a problem with his shoulder which necessitated using his revolver rather than his sword during the charge, reflecting that if he had been using his sword he might well have been killed in the latter stages when he was surrounded by the enemy.
One of things I particularly liked about Young Winston was the music. I bought the soundtrack album in 1985. The music for the film was in the main composed by Sir Alfred Ralston. He was brought into the film by director Attenborough as the two had worked together on a previous film, ‘Oh what a Lovely War’. The soundtrack features music by Edward Elgar, notably the Pomp and Circumstance March no 4 as well as Nimrod from the Enigma Variations.
Churchill ended up in a POW camp but resolved to escape despite also claiming to the Boers that he was a correspondent and should not have been detained. With the help of a group of Lancashire miners, Winston stowed away on a goods train and made his way back to the British lines.
Goldfinger is probably one of the best books in the Bond series and only the second 007 book that I ever read. (I’ll tell you about the first one later). I was at school at the time and for one of our assignments in English, we were asked to bring in a book which contained a really good description of a character. I chose Goldfinger as in it, Ian Fleming describes Goldfinger as a man who appeared to have been made using bits of other peoples’ bodies. This must have been in the mid-1960s and although the character of James Bond was pretty well known, the films had not begun to permeate down to the television screen.
This is an interesting story and the resulting film has perhaps become the quintessential Bond film even more so than Goldfinger. The story is about a criminal underworld organisation (SPECTRE) that steals an aircraft with nuclear weapons and holds the west to ransom threatening to explode the bombs.
In this book the secret service find that Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, is trying to assume the identity of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville. Bond poses as Sir Hilary Bray of the College of Arms in order to meet with Blofeld. Interestingly, Sir Hilary gives Bond a quick resumé of Bond’s family history including the Bond family motto ‘the world is not enough’ which was used by the film producers for the title of a later 007 film unrelated to Fleming’s books.
This book follows on from the previous one and we find James Bond depressed and disillusioned with his job after the death of Tracy. M considers sacking Bond but instead sends him on a diplomatic mission to meet the head of the Japanese secret service. The British want access to Russian documents which the Japanese are currently decoding. The Japanese decide to offer this information to Bond if he will assassinate a British resident who has created a garden of death, a garden full of poisonous plants which are attracting many Japanese citizens who want to commit suicide. Bond realises that this man is Blofeld and decides to keep this quiet until after he has killed him.
Casino Royale is the first book in the 007 series and it’s a pretty interesting and original one too. ‘Le Chiffre’, a gambler and also a member of SMERSH, a murderous department of the KGB is engaged in a desperate effort to win a great deal of money at the casinos of Royale Les Eaux in France. Le Chiffre is desperate because he has used SMERSH funds for his personal use and his spymaster bosses will not be pleased if they find out. Britain’s secret service happens to find out about this and sends Bond to France to make sure Le Chiffre doesn’t recoup those funds as of course as we all know, James Bond 007 is a bit of an expert with the cards.
This was the third entry into the 007 series and the action takes place mostly in Dover. Millionaire Hugo Drax wants England to enter the space race and so he spends his own money on a rocket named the Moonraker which he intends to donate to the British government. It turns out that Drax is actually a nazi who wants to avenge defeat in the second world war by arranging for the rocket to destroy London. I read recently that Fleming wrote the book while staying in a cottage situated down by the famous chalk cliffs of Dover which was once owned by Noel Coward and later Fleming himself. It’s not a bad read at all and starts off with M asking Bond a favour as he suspects Drax to be cheating at cards and he wants Bond to see if he can sort things out as at the time, this was the mid-1950s, cheating at cards in London high society could really be a big scandal.
Fleming wrote this book at Goldeye, his house in Jamaica, after doing a great deal of research about diamond smuggling. Bond’s mission is to investigate a diamond smuggling ring and he does this by impersonating a diamond smuggler called Peter Franks. Franks leads Bond to an American woman called Tiffany Case who he begins to fall for. He tracks the smuggling ring to the American Spang brothers, leaders of the Spangled Mob, a criminal gang. The finale takes place in the Spangs’ restored western town, Spectreville.
British Secret Service. To do this they persuade a cypher clerk, Tatiana Romanova, to pretend to defect to the west with a Spektor cypher machine. She claims she will only to defect to Bond, having fallen for him after reading his KGB file.
Prior to the writing of this book, a firearms expert called Major Boothroyd wrote to Fleming explaining that an agent like Bond would never be armed with a Baretta as it was more of a ladies gun. Boothroyd recommended a Walther PPK. Fleming was so impressed he included the new gun in Dr No and also added a new character named Boothroyd as the armourer of the secret service.
A long time ago I decided that I would set myself the task of reading the entire Hamish Macbeth series of books. There are 34 books in the series, all written by author M.C. Beaton which is in fact a pen name for Marion Chesney. Marion actually wrote many books under various pseudonyms including Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, Charlotte Ward and Sarah Chester. After Marion’s death in 2019 further Hamish Macbeth novels have appeared penned by writer R.W. Green.
I mentioned a while ago about my 
Forsyth did his national service in the RAF and was commissioned as an Acting Pilot Officer in 1956. After leaving the RAF he became a journalist working for the news agency Reuters and later he joined the BBC. He was the perfect choice for a foreign correspondent as he spoke numerous languages including French, German and Russian. In 1967 he was reporting on the war between Biafra and Nigeria when the BBC decided they were no longer interested in that particular war. Forsyth resigned from the BBC and continued to report on the war as a freelance. He even admitted later that this was when he was recruited by MI6 as an informant.
The Day of the Jackal
The Fourth Protocol
John’s book was a great read. He started out working with Alan Bennett as a comedy writer and performer but when he realised that he probably had no future as a tv comedian he got himself a job as a newspaper reporter in Liverpool and later moved over to the BBC as a radio reporter.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 